Dr. Yan obtained his BA from Materials Science and Engineering Department of Nanjing University, China, in 1999. He finished his Phd from Materials Science and Engineering Department of State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2004. After that, He joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a postdoctoral research associate until joining Nanyang Technological University in 2007.